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Discovering The GMAT
I became aware of the GMAT when, in 2017, I saw a Kaplan 2014 textbook in my sister’s bedroom titled with the four capital letters that would run through my mind across 3 years: GMAT. I asked her what it was and she told me it was basically the LSAT for business school. She apparently had studied for barely a week and gave up (understandably so) but that textbook sat in her room for months. After attending another family function where relatives and family friends asked me what I was doing for work (I was selling suits) and what I would do with my degree (Philosophy), I left with a feeling of inadequacy. I know that’s never a good place to come from before deciding to do something but I knew I wanted to upgrade my life and not knowing what my next life move would be, I decided that business school could be the stepping stone to take me to that next level. So I asked to borrow the Kaplan book and I started flipping through the pages across the quantitative section. This is no exaggeration when I say that I might has well have been reading ancient hieroglyphics. I had never excelled in math growing up, but that was probably my fault since being proficient in math requires doing ones homework, which I rarely, if ever, did. I also didn’t study for exams or tests and got by by just having a decent memory and semi-listening in class. Looking at the quant section, I couldn’t decipher a single question no matter how simple it may be to me now. For example, I wouldn’t have been able to solve for X when given 1) Y+X=7 & 2) Y=3. I didn’t even know long division or larger multiplication. I definitely didn’t know how to work with fractions or set up a basic equation and how to manipulate said equation. I also couldn’t believe that these questions had to be solved within 2 minutes each—that part especially blew my mind. I didn’t really look at the verbal section because I was so overwhelmed with the quant side, but I knew I wanted to take on this challenge.
Learning The Math Basics
After a long day of work in sales, being on my feet for 8 hours, I would come home and go on Youtube and search up videos on all the math basics. The channel I really found a lot of value in is called The Organic Chemistry Tutor. I had to learn all the foundations to even begin to understand what the GMAT questions were talking about. I would smile when I saw comments on the video that would read: “I’m in Grade 5 and this will really help me on my test!”. There I was at 23 learning 5th grade math—but there was no way around it. I did this for weeks and could only do about 1 hour a day before I was completely exhausted. I started to understand math again and I owe a lot to that Youtube channel for getting me solid. It should be said that virtually no GMAT specific course that I know of starts from the absolute basics, so Youtube will be a great free resource for you.
Kaplan Textbook
Now with what I believed to be a foundational knowledge in math, I began to work through the Kaplan book my sister lent me. My study schedule was not as sharp as it would eventually become but I would study for maybe 30-45 mins on a weekday, but then devour the book for 6 hours on a Sunday. I thought I was making loads of headway, but then I would go on gmatclub for example or some other gmat related site and see a question and not know how to approach it at all. I did not understand why this was happening. I was working through the book, but I was still lost. If I was being honest with myself, I would have realized that I had no conceptual understanding of what I was learning. The process for most questions in the book went like this: 1) I would have no idea what it was asking for 2) I would try to think and conceptualize what was going one 3) I would not know what was going on 4) I would look at the answer and read the explanation 5) I would tell myself that next time I would know what to do for this specific question. Horrible learning strategy for many obvious reasons, one being that of course I would not remember exactly how to proceed with that specific question the next time I went over it and another being that I might never see that exact question again. Furthermore, the book teaches a concept in two pages and then gives about 10 practice questions and moves on. For me, this was not in-depth enough to solidify my knowledge. This continued on for weeks, pumping myself full of confidence as I worked through the whole quant section. Until I took the diagnostic at the front of the book untimed and completely tanked it. Not to mention that I was so cocky that I thought I would be fine in verbal and then tanked that too. Needless to say, I was absolutely demoralized. So, I stopped studying.
Return To Kaplan Textbook
In 2017, a few months passed without studying. I also made the mistake of mentioning to people that I was studying for the test, leading people to ask me regularly about how studying was going—I would lie and say it was going well but that it’s a process. In the middle of summer I began to feel that emptiness inside me again and knew I had to get back to studying if I wanted to change my life. Evidently, a few months is a long time to take off from studying for this test because I had forgotten a lot. Once again, I worked on the quantitative side of things. I would come home after another long day at work and study for 45-60 minutes, which for me at the time was plenty. I couldn’t imagine studying for 2-3 hours a day like many people I saw online claimed to have studied. I would also always take Saturdays off as a treat for myself. But something was just not clicking for me. I would spend all this time working on a question, but if any variation on the question was introduced, I was stumped. Now, I don’t want to make it seem like I learned nothing from the Kaplan book, because I did learn some things, but being that I was aiming for a high score, I didn’t think that this book or strategy of learning would take me there. I also started to study on my lunch breaks at work and read articles on Magoosh or watch GMAT related Youtube content.
Official Guide
In December of 2017, I purchased the OG. I figured if I was going to do well on this test, I would need to purchase this book. So, I started from the beginning and worked through the questions untimed starting from the beginning. Though it was definitely taking me more than 2 minutes per question, I was kind of impressed with the fact that I was understanding the questions at all. Perhaps all the practice on my math foundations and the Kaplan book was paying off. Though, after I got past the first few pages of the OG the difficulty shoots up and I was once again struggling. I then turned to the verbal portion of the book and thought I would be doing great at CR, considering my entire undergraduate degree in philosophy was spent analyzing arguments, but I was once again shown that I was dealing with a different animal in the GMAT. Checking out a few SC questions, I got them almost all wrong—after all they seemed like they could all be right. Once again though, I put verbal on the back burner because I knew I still had this quant beast in front of me. I kept this strategy up of trying to learn through doing questions, as is often preached on online forums, but this just didn’t cut the mustard for me. I was having flashbacks of my time spent of the Kaplan book and I was “learning” on a very superficial level. At this point in mid 2018, I started a new job and in the excitement of earning a promotion, I lost the hunger for studying for this test.
The Mental Click To Studying Seriously
In April 2019, the desire to study for this test resurfaced—but this time I made it clear in my mind. I was going to complete this test. At this point I was keen on only using free resources. Other than the OG, I did not want to spend a dime on any other study materials and figured that there was plenty of information out there and all I had to do was piece it together myself. Lurking through Reddit, someone posted a link of an entire web series of videos on the GMAT subject by subject. I was extremely excited because I learn great from videos. I won’t mention the name of this site for two reasons: 1) I don’t remember 2) It looked like someone ripped all the videos from some other possibly legitimate source and compiled them together (but I am not sure about this). I also decided that I would take proper notes. When I was doing the Kaplan and OG, I was not taking any of my own notes—I was just doing the practice problems. So, I would watch each video which had a lesson, for example coordinate geometry, which had a 10-15 minute video, sprinkled with a few practice questions. I would pause the video, take notes, do the practice problems and then move on to the next video. And let me clarify that the videos were all along the same length—so Overlapping Sets would have a 10 minute video and then a few questions and that’s it. In my naïveté, I believed that this was sufficient learning. I was actually pleased, because I was able to link some things backs to the Kaplan book, and I zoomed through some videos. I also took pages and pages of notes. These two months, though extremely organized in my note taking and disciplined in my study schedule, were in essence a waste of time. I should not have expected that doing 4 practice questions per topic would suffice to get me a score of anything past a 500. This was obvious when I lurked on gmatclub at questions and almost all the questions were well out of my league. I did gain something out of these two months: consistency. All my studying before this was more spastic and I would skip a couple days in a row, but now I had settled in and committed to studying 6 days a week, no matter what. So now with my rigid study schedule and my determination to get things done, I became open to the idea of paying for a proper GMAT course and investing in my future.
Target Test Prep
Lurking on r/GMAT, I saw many many people recommending Target Test Prep (TTP). I looked it up on gmatclub to see the reviews and they were overwhelmingly positive. I was hesitant about the price because I hadn’t spent more than $100 so far, but I was locked in to getting this done and if doing this course would finally put this test behind me then it was worth it. So in July 2019, I bought the free trial and then the four month deal (little did I know at the time that I would be subscribed to them for over a year). I took the course as seriously as I could and took my own handwritten notes, with different coloured highlighters and also made flashcards. I attempted all the practice problems. This course was different than the Kaplan and OG because it would have a lesson and then immediately have a practice problem after it. I learn best through examples and so this was perfect for me. My schedule at this point in my life was as intense as it’s ever been. I would work long 9 hour days, mostly moving around, come home and go to the gym 4 times a week and on top of that I was studying for about 45-60 mins every day after work and a couple hours each weekend day. I know this might not sound intense, but working in my field, there are not many people who have energy leftover for the day—but I was locked in to my goal. I would also use my lunches to watch videos by GMATNinja, Manhattan Prep, Veritas and any other reputable source. My life surrounded the GMAT.
Completing the course did not take the four months I was expecting it would. I’m sure if one was able to invest 3 hours a day and 10 hours across a weekend, then for sure this may be possible, but I just didn’t have it in me to invest that kind of time. TTP is absolutely a huge investment in time as the quant course is massive, but it was exactly what I needed to take me from the superficial knowledge that I had to a real understanding of all the variations of questions. There were also practice tests after each chapter from Easy to Medium to Hard. These were amazing. Until now, after 2 years, I never learned this test in such a structured and detailed way. Now, they won’t teach you the very basics of math like how to do algebra, so take care of that before you start paying for the course. I completed the quant section chapters and all of its tests at the end of February, which means it took me 8 months to complete. I then went back and reread all of the chapter lessons and made a 31 question custom test of varying difficulty for each chapter. I should mention that it was around the time that I started the Work/Rate/Time modules that I began an error log. I know, I know, I should’ve started one from the get-go but I felt like it was already taking me twice the time to do the course and having an error log would slow me down even more, but it’s indeed a good tool. My error log was so-so at first, but I emailed VivianGMATRockstar, a GMAT tutor who was a past frequenter of r/GMAT, as she was offering a free template. This one was much better and had a different log for quant and verbal and had the brilliant column where I could put a url—this url allowed me to put the link of the question if it was from gmatclub, or the link to the TTP test. However, I didn’t use this error log until after I completed my first mock.
Verbal Self-Study/Manhattan Prep Sentence Correction Guide
Around the fall of 2019, I knew that I would have to start learning about verbal as well, but TTP had not released their verbal curriculum yet. Many people on online forums like gmatclub and reddit spoke of how the MGMAT SC book was all they needed. But before I bought this book, VivianGMATRockstar posted on reddit that knowing how to breakdown a sentence to its component parts, ie, subject, verb, object, preposition, conjunction, etc. was crucial to getting SC questions right and this proved to be absolutely true. I don’t believe I ever learned grammar in school and if I did, I probably never did the homework so this was once again a brand new topic for me to learn. I looked up some free, basic little course on google for learning sentence structure and it would have little lessons and practice problems. It taught me a ton on identifying parts of a sentence and this is crucial if you want to disect an SC question. Once again, much like with quant, I’m not sure how many courses out there go over the very basics, so I would suggest getting this done before you buy a subscription to any course. I then cracked the MGMAT book every other day for about half an hour, but ill be honest, I wasn’t taking much in. They used a lot of grammar terminology in the book that was going over my head and so I stopped about halfway and maybe absorbed 10% of it—I was pretty disappointed. The best investment in my time to get me from beginner to intermediate was to watch GMATNinja videos. His videos have helped so many people, he needs to be inducted into the GMAT Hall of Fame. I practiced CR a bit and I did not study RC at all because I figured well, its just reading. Little did I know I was leaving a lot of extra points on the table.
GMATPrep Mock 1: 710 (Q49 V38 IR8)
At the end of March 2020, I took my first mock and I couldn’t believe when I saw this score. I was so helpless at the beginning of my journey and I actually cracked 700! I literally got up and shook my fist. I felt so elated and finally felt like I deserved this. At the same time, I knew I had to put in more work and more mocks. Around this time, TTP released their beta verbal program and I was very excited. I watched an interview that GMATNinja did with dcummins on the gmatclub YouTube channel and dcummins cited that TTP’s verbal materials were game changing. I saw what TTP did with my quant and I was looking forward to a structured course to learn verbal as I saw that with my “baseline” of 38 and assuming my quant stayed the same, that my overall score would skyrocket. Also, I had never studied for IR or did a single practice question, so I was quite pleased with an 8.
TTP Verbal Beta
I began TTP Verbal and began with the CR modules. It was the first time learning about the different question types and what they meant. Before this, I thought assumption and inference basically meant the same thing and I had no real clue how to attack boldface questions, etc.. So, this was pretty nice to actually learn in a systematic way the different Q-Types and the common traps. I haven’t taken another CR course so I can’t compare this to a Powerscore, let’s say, but I know this definitely took my CR skills to the next level. It made me think logically in terms of the test and shaped how I approach the question. I then started their SC modules and I learned quite a bit, but I was getting so bored because of how long the chapters were. There are tons of practice questions which works to my learning style, but I was still a little overwhelmed. SC is no joke and there are lots of caveats to know, but the course covers most of them. They did not have an RC module yet, but that was fine for me because I honestly didn’t even want to learn anything more for this demanding test—I figured that I just need to read the passage and ill be fine.
GMATPrep Mock 2: 690 (Q47 V38 IR8)
I was annoyed with this. I had done all this work on verbal only to get the exact same verbal score—I did not know why this happened. Also, my Q score went down slightly, but since I had gotten a 49 prior I knew that I had it in me to score higher. At this point of my studying I was studying two hours daily with no days off and spending most of it on verbal, so I decided that every other day I would do a random custom test on TTP to keep my quant skills sharp. I studied for another two weeks and took another mock.
GMATPrep Mock 3: 690 (Q45 V39 IR 4)
Now I was getting pissed, upset and insecure about everything. I had spent two and a half months between my first mock and this one and went down 20 points. Two months is all some people need to study for this whole test and I had spent years. I felt horrible the rest of the day. I know 690 was a very good score, but I was aiming for much higher—at least a 720. My quant actually went all the way down to 45 and my verbal only increased by a single point. I think I blindly skipped ahead on most of IR. I was looking up on google to see if it was normal to plateau on mocks, just to get some validation that I wasn’t just stupid. I even messaged the guys at TTP and Marty Murray, the creator of the verbal curriculum offered to chat on the phone. We had a fun chat and I asked about mindfulness techniques as I read a couple articles where he cited mindfulness and meditation for taking him to his perfect 800 score. I continued to work my tail off on quant as I was very frustrated with this score. I couldn’t believe after all the tireless nights and hard work I put in that i would have a Q45. I decided to alternate my days of studying: one day would be quant, the next verbal and so on. I was studying about 3 hours a day now because I had watched on a Manhattan Prep Youtube video that 3 hours maximum is ideal because anything past that would be counterproductive, but as I later realized this was a complete myth—I was able to study much longer, but that comes later in my journey. I would spend two hours in the morning working on problems and reviewing lessons and then watch an hour long video from GMATNinja, Manhattan Prep or Veritas Prep in the evening.
One thing I noted was that I was definitely fatigued during this mock. I would take the mock identically to how the Online GMAT was structured, which meant no break between Quant and Verbal and then 5 mins before IR. So, I knew I needed to do more mocks to get used to solving 67 questions in a row and maintain sharpness throughout. However, I had already used 3 of the official mocks and I was scared of doing more too soon and seeing the same old 690ish score, so I researched non-official mocks and saw that Manhattan Prep, Veritas Prep and Kaplan all had options. I did not want to pay anymore for study materials however, since I had already been paying for TTP for about a year at this point and I had bought the 4 GMATPrep tests that aren’t free. So, I decided that I would take each of these test prep companies’ free mocks.
Manhattan Prep Mock 1: 720 (Q45 V42 IR4)
I often heard online that one shouldn’t be too concerned with the scores of non-official mocks as the scoring algorithm can never be sufficiently replicated, but I’d be lying if I said seeing this score didn’t make me feel good. The quant was lower than I was aiming for, but I often read that MGMAT mocks have notoriously difficult quant sections—so I was pretty happy with the 45. I was also happy with the verbal, but the algorithm is definitely off with this mock because I got 12 verbal questions wrong and still had a 42. I’m sure this could never be the case with official tests, but I was still happy about it.
My quant work continued every other day and I continued to do custom tests on random subjects on TTP and reviewed them. I also continued watching videos on Youtube. I comprehend subjects best when I can learn from many different sources, so combining TTP with videos from test prep companies and also with videos from just random math channels helped to synthesize a concept for me. I feel like it created different neural pathways for me and multiple reference points to draw from. I also continued to error log after each mock and on TTP questions that I felt were medium level difficulty—after all, the key to this test is to master the easy and medium concepts.
My verbal work continued as well and I knew that to earn an elite score, I would need to master SC. I heard that SC was the most learnable and so I figured that if I invested the time into this subsection that my verbal score would shoot up. I returned to the Manhattan Prep SC Guide and was pleasantly surprised. I was retaining more information from it than I had before. This must’ve been a combination of learning SC from TTP and having another reference point to draw from. Also, I was doing more practice questions from watching videos and doing mocks so, I could relate what I was reading to a question I had encountered.
GMATPrep Mock 4: 680 (Q49 V32 IR7)
This rollercoaster had taken a nosedive once again. I was very happy with my Q49 and I knew that I could attribute this to my constant custom tests. Quant is really a skill that needs to be sharpened, like an NBA player that shoots 1000 shots before the game. It really helped me to reduce fatigue, which is critical on this test. After all, it doesn’t matter what you have in your brain if you’re too tired to pull it out. Doing timed sets of 20 questions (I didn’t do 31 questions that often) helped in a big way. My verbal score was very frustrating, on the other hand. I had put in almost four months of hard verbal work and I dropped lower than I had on my first test without any verbal study. There was clearly a disconnect here, so I reviewed my mock and learned from my mistakes. It was at this point I was determined to perfect SC. I wanted to get every single SC question right on the exam. I also wanted to do really well on CR and the combination of the two would have to result in me getting an outstanding verbal score.
I started a pre-mock ritual where I would listen to music and dial in. I would repeat to myself my strategy for quant which was to “read every single word” and “take note of every restriction”. I think this was the key to getting me a Q49 because I minimized my mistakes caused by missing a single word such as “only”, for example or considering negative numbers when the first sentence of the question told me it was positive.
In keeping with my strategy of bolstering my stamina, one week later I took a Kaplan mock.
Kaplan Mock 1: 730 (Q48 V43 IR7)
I was happy about this even though I know I couldn’t put too much weight on the result of a non-official mock. I felt like I was putting all my skills together at this point. The quant section of this mock was tricky and semi-similar to the official questions I had done, but the verbal questions were definitely off. I started doing my review of mocks and when I would look the questions up on gmatclub there would be many comments along the lines of “this question is dubious” and so I didn’t even review most of the verbal.
At this point, I started meditating every night before bed. I would look up a 10 minute guided meditation on Youtube and follow along.
Veritas Prep Mock 1: 710 (Q49 V39 IR4)
Now, I was especially happy about this one because I had heard that Veritas has particularly difficult mocks and so I figured that if I could get a 710, then my actual score could be much better. The quant was pretty difficult, but the verbal was just strange at points. The SC questions were not like any of the official materials I had practiced with and the CR was also off. I agree with anyone who says that the official verbal questions are the only ones you should practice with. I personally enjoyed the TTP CR questions myself and I feel like they definitely helped me, but they are extremely hard so don’t take the chapter tests scores to heart.
Now that I had scored over 700 on two non-official mocks, I felt my confidence surge back up a bit. At this point my strategy was clear: 1) I would study in 2 hour chunks, once in the morning and once in the afternoon for a total of 4 hours. I chose 2 hours chunks because that was about how long the quant and verbal sections combined would be. I wanted to be completely comfortable working straight through so that I would build up my stamina. I figured that if I could do this twice a day then doing it once on exam day would be effortless. 2) I would study quant and verbal both on the same day—the first chunk would be quant and the second would be verbal.
I then took the Manhattan SC Guide and decided to read it completely from cover to cover. This was my third or fourth run through but it was key to perfecting my SC. It took me 3 days of reading a few hours each day, but somehow it felt like I was truly understanding it this time. Before, my eyes might glaze over an unfamiliar concept and I would skip ahead and assume that I understood it, but now I was reading every single word in the book and fully comprehending it. I would also refer to TTP SC to cross reference if I truly understood a concept from all angles. I encourage anyone to return to study materials intermittently throughout your studies—because you will have more context from practice questions. Even though I had “read” it 3 times prior, it was like I was reading it with brand new eyes. After I finished this read through of the Manhattan book, I could not get questions wrong. I would do SC questions of 700 level difficulty in timed sets of 10-12 and would get 100% accuracy for days on end. The combination of TTP Verbal SC, MGMAT SC and trying to identify every mistake in all the four wrong answers of every practice question I did made me pretty bulletproof.
I would also do OG quant questions in timed sets in the mornings and review them. Thank god for gmatclub for this one. I don’t see any reason to buy the OG when all the questions are on their website. I’m not sure how they get around the copyright issues, but honestly I don’t care, this question bank was invaluable. I would click on the “Official Guide” tag and then open up 10-15 tabs of questions and work through them. At first, I was struggling with the OG questions because there definitely is a difference between the way the questions are asked in OG and the way TTP questions are. The OG will have a modifier or restriction that you really have to pay attention to, whereas the TTP questions were very straightforward. So, to anyone that is using TTP, I would recommend practicing with OG questions to get the feel of what the questions on your official test will be.
After 3 weeks of strict studying on August 10, I figured it was time for me to take GMATPrep Mock 5 because I planned to take the Online GMAT in August.
GMATPrep Mock 5: 770 (Q50 V45 IR8)
I got up from my chair at home and flexed. It was all coming together. This was the score I knew I was capable of when I could put all my skills and tools together. I was comfortable sitting and working for 2 hours straight so my fatigue was handled and I could actively think. I had reduced my dumb mistakes on quant by paying attention to every single word, qualifier and restriction. My verbal shot up because I had close to mastered SC and my CR was pretty strong. My RC was leading to a couple mistakes but at the time, I didn’t know that it was possible to improve RC—I would learn that was false. I had only done IR on mocks and so I was happy with my perfect score there.
After everything I had been through up to this point, seeing a 770 on my screen was the confidence booster I needed. As wrong as it may sound, I needed validation that what I was doing and all the time and effort and sacrifices I had made were leading somewhere. I continued reading every night for one hour, which I had started a couple weeks prior, and meditating for 10 minutes each night with Youtube videos. Before the mock, I took a nap and I listened to Eminem, to get my energy up because he raps in an extremely fast cadence which helped me to energize and lock in. I felt the meditation helped me to relax into each question. My “mantra” before the test was that when a question popped up in front of me, I would take in all the details of the question. I would notice what every single word was saying. I would notice all the modifiers, in both quant and verbal questions. Modifiers are huge in all sections of the test. I believed that focusing fully and taking in the question one at a time, in a meditative way, would undoubtedly lead me to getting the question correct and if I just kept doing this question after question, the score would take care of itself.
For the next week, I didn’t know exactly what to study because I felt like I had learned everything, so I took my foot off the pedal a bit because I didn’t know what direction to drive in. I continued to read and meditate at night and one week after Mock 5, I decided to confidently take Mock 6.
GMATPrep Mock 6: 680 (Q42 V40 IR7)
Dumbfounded. Shocked. Extremely Confused. How on earth did I get a Q42? I had never received a quant score that low before. A V40 I could live with because I knew that the margin for error on verbal is so tiny. It turns out I only had 5 verbal questions wrong. I couldn’t believe that a Q42 was my level of quant proficiency. After all the work I had put in, I couldn’t imagine this to be the case. I did notice however that my energy before the mock started was slightly low. I had tried to take a nap, but I couldn’t really fall asleep so I just rolled around. As I got up to listen to my music and move my body around, which embarrassingly included shadow boxing, I wasn’t moving around that much. I feel like I started the mock with a laissez faire attitude and I attribute this to my meditation. Naturally, I’m a pretty relaxed person, even though preparing for this test gave me extreme anxiety and meditating definitely helped, but I think I went too far into believing I had to be “zen” during the test. This calm demeanour made me quite feeble during quant, and I ran behind on time, and to catch up I rushed through some questions which upon review were extremely easy.
I planned to take the exam on August 25th, which gave me 8 days to lock in and get myself prepared for the big dance. Here’s what I did:
1. I stopped meditating—it had done what it was supposed to do, which was allow me to see more in the moment, but it was having diminishing returns by making me too blasé regarding my approach.
2. I studied for 5-6 hours each day.
3. I did timed sets of 20 to 30 quant questions in a row from questions off of gmatclub, where I would just open up a bunch of tabs. I would then review and error log any sub-600 and 600-700 level questions that I got wrong. I would look at the 700 level question answers, and if it was way over my head or the percentage of difficulty was 75% or higher, I didn’t bother to error log. I figured my time was best spent solidifying my weakness on easy/medium question as opposed to learning some obscure geometry concept.
4. I did 36 OG verbal questions in timed sets with equal parts of SC, CR and RC. Since verbal was the latter part of the test, I wanted to reduce or eliminate any fatigue associated with doing 36 verbal questions in a row. Like I mentioned before, you can know all the rules and question types that you want, but if you’re not fully awake in the moment then that knowledge won’t help you.
5. I would do shorter sets of 10-15 of each question type as well and read the answers that people posted.
There were a few things that I took away from my 8 days of ripping through OG questions. The first was the difference in my energy that I needed for quant and for verbal. For quant, instead of the lax “zen” mindset I had in my last mock, I benefitted from having an aggressive approach. I would sit up straight, take in all the details, do my work carefully and with a determined mindset, check that I was answering the right question, click the right answer, confirm and move on. My energy was much better now and having a slightly “aggressive” and determined energy was the key to nailing these timed sets for me.
These timed sets took my verbal to a high level. Due to my thorough SC work, which always included naming off every reason why wrong answers were wrong, I could barely get an SC question wrong. CR was about 80% accuracy, which I was slightly nervous about at first, but the more practice questions you do the more you see what the GMAT is looking for. The RC practice problems exposed a weakness in me that I refused to see because I couldn’t imagine that I was bad at all sections of this test, but it revealed that I missed a lot of the little things in the questions and answer choices. Modifiers and prepositions in RC are very important to pay attention to, especially in the answer choices.
The day before the exam I made a list of everything I needed to get done for the next day and cleared my desk. I did practice questions and reviewed my error log. My exam was scheduled for 6:15 PM the next day, with check in at 5:45 PM. I find that my mind fully awakens in the evening, after I’ve gotten a couple meals in me and a nap. This was also around the same time that I had taken all my mocks. The night before the exam I watched motivational videos. You know the ones that come up in our Youtube recommended pages and have the word “DETERMINATION” on the thumbnail over a picture of a person sweating. I watched one by Eric Thomas called “You Owe You” and this really struck a chord with me. I did owe me. I owed myself a good performance and I owed myself to put my best foot forward on this test. I owed myself, after all the long, hard nights I had put in, to push through this test with big energy and focused determination.
Exam Day
On August 25th, I woke up in the morning and had oatmeal, because I found it to give me a steady energy level. I did about 20 practice questions of quant and verbal—mostly just sub-600 and 600-700 and a couple 700-level questions to get my confidence up. There was no point in doing super hard questions and demoralizing myself. Exam day is all about mindset. I did really well on this practice set and decided to get my body moving and the blood flowing. I rolled out on a foam roller and stretched out. Throughout this entire time I have been working out 3-4 times a week and apparently this is really beneficial for energy levels. For 45 mins, I stretched out and moved around. During this stretching session, I watched videos on the mentality of Kobe Bryant and his killer instinct to win. I watched football hype up videos to get my energy right. I woke ever cell of my body up and got prepared for the battle to come.
I showered, ate lunch—a sandwich, and crackers, nothing too heavy, watched Netflix and by 3:00 PM I was back in bed for a nap. I didn’t fully fall asleep, but I closed my eyes for a while until 4:30. Then at 4:30, my pregame ritual began. I had researched on how all the top athletes have a pregame ritual and created my own. I put on Eminem and Drake in my earphones and was up and moving. I danced, got in my body and got hyped. I shadowboxed and breathed deeply. I watched football pump up videos of Ray Lewis and got aggressive. I was gameday ready and ready to show this test whose house they were in. I had homecourt advantage being that I was taking the GMAT Online and I was never letting anything come in to my house and push me around—I was ready to smack this test. I then put on a nice new shirt and nice shorts. I also made sure that my hair looked nice and even trimmed up my beard. I didn’t do this for the proctor that would be watching me through my webcam, I did this for myself. They say, when you look good you feel good and when you feel good you do good. My mind was primed. Some people say that quant and verbal test the same things, but I had a different mentality going into each section. For quant, I was going to be aggressive. Every question that came up, I was mentally slapping and moving onto the next. For verbal, my approach was more relaxed but still determined. After all the most important part of approaching any verbal question is truly understanding exactly what the passage/stem/question/answer is saying and you have to settle into each question for this. At 5:10, I had 16 questions prepared all around sub-600 to 600-700 level from PS,DS,SC and CR. Marty Murray had posted on reddit that doing warm up questions were beneficial, so I set them up from gmatclub that morning. I wasn’t meant to learn anything from them (I didn’t even check if I got the answer right so as to not shake my confidence) and I wasn’t meant to be challenged by them—these warm up questions were to warm up my hands and my brain. I finished them and went to the bathroom. I ate a few dark chocolate covered almonds and sat down for check in.
At 5:45, check-in was open and I began the process. I had already done the system check a couple days prior, which just checks the internet connection and the system requirements of the computer you are using. They then gave me a url to enter on my phone which sent me to a Pearson website. On this site I took 7 pictures: 4 of all four sides of my workspace, 2 of both sides of my ID and 1 selfie. I then put my phone out of arms reach and continued with the check in on my laptop. My proctor immediately asked me to show my whiteboard to the webcam because she wanted to see something. I’m assuming it was to see the brand logo of the whiteboard that was stuck on the front and to ensure that it wasn’t a tiny equation or something. It was all okay and I slid the chat away. And the test began 15 mins early.
I took the 2 mins of instruction time to breathe deeply and slap myself in the face a few times; I’m sure this confused the proctor. I then began the quant section and was pleasantly surprised that it was a question I definitely knew how to do. The next question was extremely easy. Then I got some tricky questions, that I felt I knew how to do (but when I replayed it in my mind after the test I figured I got it wrong), and then something started to happen. I was gaining on time. I had never done this in any of my mocks. At around question 12 the questions felt extremely easy. This pattern continued on for over 10 more questions and by question 24 I felt dejected. In my mind, the only reason that the questions I was getting were so easy was because I had bombed the beginning of the test. After all, that’s how everyone online explains the algorithm to work, so it must be true right? I slowed down and answered questions but it was only taking me a minute to do each of them. I shook my head and remembered: “aggression”. So, I snapped back in, stopped feeling sorry for myself, and had 15 minutes for the last 3 questions. One of these was time consuming for me so I’m glad I had the time, but I’m not even sure if I got it right. When quant finished, I felt horrible. The section seemed way too easy—in fact it seemed like I had been given a mock from 1995 because the questions to me seemed like the “classics” and none of those “next-gen” questions I had practiced with had appeared. I couldn’t dwell on it too long. I took a minute to breathe and let it go. I had verbal in front of me and I was actually excited for it because I had gotten really good at it in the past month. Right off the bat in verbal I got hit with a pretty hard RC, but I’m not sure if it was very hard or just made harder since I just finished an entire quant section. The questions were tricky, but the test moved on. The rest of the RC were well spread out and easier than the first. For the most part the CR was very very manageable, which I enjoyed obviously, but I’m a bad gauge at question difficulty—questions that I saw as pretty easy were touted as high difficulty on gmatclub and even vice versa. Most of the SC was “hackable”, but there were a couple that I spent some good time on. Overall, I finished verbal with a much different feeling than I finished quant with. After verbal the IR instructions come up before the option to take a break does, which is really strange, so a heads up on that. After I clicked through the page instructions, I wiped down my whiteboard and showed it to the webcam, front and back. I then went to the bathroom and ate a couple more dark chocolate covered almonds. I also just stretched and breathed. I sat down with around 30 seconds left on my break and I assumed it would automatically take me to the next screen, but it doesn’t. You have to click next to get to your first IR question. Overall IR was straightforward and had some interesting question types. Like I said, I never studied IR and only did it during mocks, but I felt it went okay. There were definitely a couple I just guessed on because I didn’t want to bother doing the calculation—but it should be noted that never once have I ever used the calculator given to me on any IR section. The test ended and I showed my whiteboard to the webcam. Clicked through to the end and the window closed. I was done.
The rest of the night was spent going over the quant section in my head. I had a horrible feeling in my stomach that I had messed up gravely at the beginning and that was why I was given questions that I perceived as extremely easy. To be fair, I was never a good gauge on quant question difficulty, but I was still perturbed. I was pretty comfortable with my verbal performance and knew that all that SC and CR drilling had paid off. Even the RC work I had done made me a lot more confident in that subsection. I knew there was a possibility that I had bombed quant and that my overall score may be decent but I know that most schools look for a decent quantitative score. Especially coming from a philosophy background, I couldn’t rely on a strong verbal alone. But, I was merciful to myself and allowed myself to take a full day off of studying for the first time in several months. It felt weird, but oh so good to do absolutely no studying and not have the feeling that I need to be getting back to my desk soon.
August 27 arrived and I planned to study lightly that day, in the case that I would need to retake. If I’m being honest with myself now, it made me really uncomfortable to think that I would have to continue on, but I would make myself do it anyway. I kept checking them website to see if my score was revealed or not. I saw that there was going to be maintenance on the site at 5:30 PM that day, so I hoped that it would be posted before that. I kept checking, then when 5:30 crept up I decided to check my phone one last time and I got and email: my score had been posted. I felt like this would be torture if my score was posted but that I wouldn’t be able to see it due to website maintenance. Nonetheless, I logged in, the website worked and I clicked the new button that appeared that said “View Online GMAT Score”:
760 (Q48 V47 IR8): 99 Percentile
My heart welled up. I did it. I really did it. After all these years, all those times I had given up and came back. All those long nights after work when I was dead tired but forced myself to study anyway. Those lunch breaks spent watching SC videos and doing flashcards when all I wanted to do was relax. The slaps in the face I got from mocks and quizzes that showed that I was not up to par. The fear that I would never overcome this. The massive insecurity I felt by feeling like everyone studied in 3 months and here I was 3 and a half years later. The shame I would feel when people would ask if I had finished the test yet and I would tell them no. It all doesn’t matter anymore. I exceeded what I set out to do.
The GMAT had taken up such a huge part of my life for so long. Even when I wasn’t studying for it, it would be there constantly when I woke up and went to bed. This has been an absolutely formative time in my young adult life. I’ve never put in the time and dedication into anything more than I have into this test—and I did what I set out to do. I proved to myself that I’m relentless and unstoppable and when I dedicate myself to a task I will get it done. I can’t believe it’s over, but I’m really glad it is. I can now put my time and energy into other parts of my life and grow as a person even more.
I’d like to thank my family and friends for putting up with this and I’d also like to thank all the following people and companies: The Organic Chemistry Tutor, GMATNinja Charles Bibilos, ScottTargetTestPrep, MartyTargetTestPrep, dcummins, bb, souvik101990, Kaplan, Manhattan Prep, Veritas Prep, Magoosh, GMAT CLUB, R/GMAT and R/MBA.
I became aware of the GMAT when, in 2017, I saw a Kaplan 2014 textbook in my sister’s bedroom titled with the four capital letters that would run through my mind across 3 years: GMAT. I asked her what it was and she told me it was basically the LSAT for business school. She apparently had studied for barely a week and gave up (understandably so) but that textbook sat in her room for months. After attending another family function where relatives and family friends asked me what I was doing for work (I was selling suits) and what I would do with my degree (Philosophy), I left with a feeling of inadequacy. I know that’s never a good place to come from before deciding to do something but I knew I wanted to upgrade my life and not knowing what my next life move would be, I decided that business school could be the stepping stone to take me to that next level. So I asked to borrow the Kaplan book and I started flipping through the pages across the quantitative section. This is no exaggeration when I say that I might has well have been reading ancient hieroglyphics. I had never excelled in math growing up, but that was probably my fault since being proficient in math requires doing ones homework, which I rarely, if ever, did. I also didn’t study for exams or tests and got by by just having a decent memory and semi-listening in class. Looking at the quant section, I couldn’t decipher a single question no matter how simple it may be to me now. For example, I wouldn’t have been able to solve for X when given 1) Y+X=7 & 2) Y=3. I didn’t even know long division or larger multiplication. I definitely didn’t know how to work with fractions or set up a basic equation and how to manipulate said equation. I also couldn’t believe that these questions had to be solved within 2 minutes each—that part especially blew my mind. I didn’t really look at the verbal section because I was so overwhelmed with the quant side, but I knew I wanted to take on this challenge.
Learning The Math Basics
After a long day of work in sales, being on my feet for 8 hours, I would come home and go on Youtube and search up videos on all the math basics. The channel I really found a lot of value in is called The Organic Chemistry Tutor. I had to learn all the foundations to even begin to understand what the GMAT questions were talking about. I would smile when I saw comments on the video that would read: “I’m in Grade 5 and this will really help me on my test!”. There I was at 23 learning 5th grade math—but there was no way around it. I did this for weeks and could only do about 1 hour a day before I was completely exhausted. I started to understand math again and I owe a lot to that Youtube channel for getting me solid. It should be said that virtually no GMAT specific course that I know of starts from the absolute basics, so Youtube will be a great free resource for you.
Kaplan Textbook
Now with what I believed to be a foundational knowledge in math, I began to work through the Kaplan book my sister lent me. My study schedule was not as sharp as it would eventually become but I would study for maybe 30-45 mins on a weekday, but then devour the book for 6 hours on a Sunday. I thought I was making loads of headway, but then I would go on gmatclub for example or some other gmat related site and see a question and not know how to approach it at all. I did not understand why this was happening. I was working through the book, but I was still lost. If I was being honest with myself, I would have realized that I had no conceptual understanding of what I was learning. The process for most questions in the book went like this: 1) I would have no idea what it was asking for 2) I would try to think and conceptualize what was going one 3) I would not know what was going on 4) I would look at the answer and read the explanation 5) I would tell myself that next time I would know what to do for this specific question. Horrible learning strategy for many obvious reasons, one being that of course I would not remember exactly how to proceed with that specific question the next time I went over it and another being that I might never see that exact question again. Furthermore, the book teaches a concept in two pages and then gives about 10 practice questions and moves on. For me, this was not in-depth enough to solidify my knowledge. This continued on for weeks, pumping myself full of confidence as I worked through the whole quant section. Until I took the diagnostic at the front of the book untimed and completely tanked it. Not to mention that I was so cocky that I thought I would be fine in verbal and then tanked that too. Needless to say, I was absolutely demoralized. So, I stopped studying.
Return To Kaplan Textbook
In 2017, a few months passed without studying. I also made the mistake of mentioning to people that I was studying for the test, leading people to ask me regularly about how studying was going—I would lie and say it was going well but that it’s a process. In the middle of summer I began to feel that emptiness inside me again and knew I had to get back to studying if I wanted to change my life. Evidently, a few months is a long time to take off from studying for this test because I had forgotten a lot. Once again, I worked on the quantitative side of things. I would come home after another long day at work and study for 45-60 minutes, which for me at the time was plenty. I couldn’t imagine studying for 2-3 hours a day like many people I saw online claimed to have studied. I would also always take Saturdays off as a treat for myself. But something was just not clicking for me. I would spend all this time working on a question, but if any variation on the question was introduced, I was stumped. Now, I don’t want to make it seem like I learned nothing from the Kaplan book, because I did learn some things, but being that I was aiming for a high score, I didn’t think that this book or strategy of learning would take me there. I also started to study on my lunch breaks at work and read articles on Magoosh or watch GMAT related Youtube content.
Official Guide
In December of 2017, I purchased the OG. I figured if I was going to do well on this test, I would need to purchase this book. So, I started from the beginning and worked through the questions untimed starting from the beginning. Though it was definitely taking me more than 2 minutes per question, I was kind of impressed with the fact that I was understanding the questions at all. Perhaps all the practice on my math foundations and the Kaplan book was paying off. Though, after I got past the first few pages of the OG the difficulty shoots up and I was once again struggling. I then turned to the verbal portion of the book and thought I would be doing great at CR, considering my entire undergraduate degree in philosophy was spent analyzing arguments, but I was once again shown that I was dealing with a different animal in the GMAT. Checking out a few SC questions, I got them almost all wrong—after all they seemed like they could all be right. Once again though, I put verbal on the back burner because I knew I still had this quant beast in front of me. I kept this strategy up of trying to learn through doing questions, as is often preached on online forums, but this just didn’t cut the mustard for me. I was having flashbacks of my time spent of the Kaplan book and I was “learning” on a very superficial level. At this point in mid 2018, I started a new job and in the excitement of earning a promotion, I lost the hunger for studying for this test.
The Mental Click To Studying Seriously
In April 2019, the desire to study for this test resurfaced—but this time I made it clear in my mind. I was going to complete this test. At this point I was keen on only using free resources. Other than the OG, I did not want to spend a dime on any other study materials and figured that there was plenty of information out there and all I had to do was piece it together myself. Lurking through Reddit, someone posted a link of an entire web series of videos on the GMAT subject by subject. I was extremely excited because I learn great from videos. I won’t mention the name of this site for two reasons: 1) I don’t remember 2) It looked like someone ripped all the videos from some other possibly legitimate source and compiled them together (but I am not sure about this). I also decided that I would take proper notes. When I was doing the Kaplan and OG, I was not taking any of my own notes—I was just doing the practice problems. So, I would watch each video which had a lesson, for example coordinate geometry, which had a 10-15 minute video, sprinkled with a few practice questions. I would pause the video, take notes, do the practice problems and then move on to the next video. And let me clarify that the videos were all along the same length—so Overlapping Sets would have a 10 minute video and then a few questions and that’s it. In my naïveté, I believed that this was sufficient learning. I was actually pleased, because I was able to link some things backs to the Kaplan book, and I zoomed through some videos. I also took pages and pages of notes. These two months, though extremely organized in my note taking and disciplined in my study schedule, were in essence a waste of time. I should not have expected that doing 4 practice questions per topic would suffice to get me a score of anything past a 500. This was obvious when I lurked on gmatclub at questions and almost all the questions were well out of my league. I did gain something out of these two months: consistency. All my studying before this was more spastic and I would skip a couple days in a row, but now I had settled in and committed to studying 6 days a week, no matter what. So now with my rigid study schedule and my determination to get things done, I became open to the idea of paying for a proper GMAT course and investing in my future.
Target Test Prep
Lurking on r/GMAT, I saw many many people recommending Target Test Prep (TTP). I looked it up on gmatclub to see the reviews and they were overwhelmingly positive. I was hesitant about the price because I hadn’t spent more than $100 so far, but I was locked in to getting this done and if doing this course would finally put this test behind me then it was worth it. So in July 2019, I bought the free trial and then the four month deal (little did I know at the time that I would be subscribed to them for over a year). I took the course as seriously as I could and took my own handwritten notes, with different coloured highlighters and also made flashcards. I attempted all the practice problems. This course was different than the Kaplan and OG because it would have a lesson and then immediately have a practice problem after it. I learn best through examples and so this was perfect for me. My schedule at this point in my life was as intense as it’s ever been. I would work long 9 hour days, mostly moving around, come home and go to the gym 4 times a week and on top of that I was studying for about 45-60 mins every day after work and a couple hours each weekend day. I know this might not sound intense, but working in my field, there are not many people who have energy leftover for the day—but I was locked in to my goal. I would also use my lunches to watch videos by GMATNinja, Manhattan Prep, Veritas and any other reputable source. My life surrounded the GMAT.
Completing the course did not take the four months I was expecting it would. I’m sure if one was able to invest 3 hours a day and 10 hours across a weekend, then for sure this may be possible, but I just didn’t have it in me to invest that kind of time. TTP is absolutely a huge investment in time as the quant course is massive, but it was exactly what I needed to take me from the superficial knowledge that I had to a real understanding of all the variations of questions. There were also practice tests after each chapter from Easy to Medium to Hard. These were amazing. Until now, after 2 years, I never learned this test in such a structured and detailed way. Now, they won’t teach you the very basics of math like how to do algebra, so take care of that before you start paying for the course. I completed the quant section chapters and all of its tests at the end of February, which means it took me 8 months to complete. I then went back and reread all of the chapter lessons and made a 31 question custom test of varying difficulty for each chapter. I should mention that it was around the time that I started the Work/Rate/Time modules that I began an error log. I know, I know, I should’ve started one from the get-go but I felt like it was already taking me twice the time to do the course and having an error log would slow me down even more, but it’s indeed a good tool. My error log was so-so at first, but I emailed VivianGMATRockstar, a GMAT tutor who was a past frequenter of r/GMAT, as she was offering a free template. This one was much better and had a different log for quant and verbal and had the brilliant column where I could put a url—this url allowed me to put the link of the question if it was from gmatclub, or the link to the TTP test. However, I didn’t use this error log until after I completed my first mock.
Verbal Self-Study/Manhattan Prep Sentence Correction Guide
Around the fall of 2019, I knew that I would have to start learning about verbal as well, but TTP had not released their verbal curriculum yet. Many people on online forums like gmatclub and reddit spoke of how the MGMAT SC book was all they needed. But before I bought this book, VivianGMATRockstar posted on reddit that knowing how to breakdown a sentence to its component parts, ie, subject, verb, object, preposition, conjunction, etc. was crucial to getting SC questions right and this proved to be absolutely true. I don’t believe I ever learned grammar in school and if I did, I probably never did the homework so this was once again a brand new topic for me to learn. I looked up some free, basic little course on google for learning sentence structure and it would have little lessons and practice problems. It taught me a ton on identifying parts of a sentence and this is crucial if you want to disect an SC question. Once again, much like with quant, I’m not sure how many courses out there go over the very basics, so I would suggest getting this done before you buy a subscription to any course. I then cracked the MGMAT book every other day for about half an hour, but ill be honest, I wasn’t taking much in. They used a lot of grammar terminology in the book that was going over my head and so I stopped about halfway and maybe absorbed 10% of it—I was pretty disappointed. The best investment in my time to get me from beginner to intermediate was to watch GMATNinja videos. His videos have helped so many people, he needs to be inducted into the GMAT Hall of Fame. I practiced CR a bit and I did not study RC at all because I figured well, its just reading. Little did I know I was leaving a lot of extra points on the table.
GMATPrep Mock 1: 710 (Q49 V38 IR8)
At the end of March 2020, I took my first mock and I couldn’t believe when I saw this score. I was so helpless at the beginning of my journey and I actually cracked 700! I literally got up and shook my fist. I felt so elated and finally felt like I deserved this. At the same time, I knew I had to put in more work and more mocks. Around this time, TTP released their beta verbal program and I was very excited. I watched an interview that GMATNinja did with dcummins on the gmatclub YouTube channel and dcummins cited that TTP’s verbal materials were game changing. I saw what TTP did with my quant and I was looking forward to a structured course to learn verbal as I saw that with my “baseline” of 38 and assuming my quant stayed the same, that my overall score would skyrocket. Also, I had never studied for IR or did a single practice question, so I was quite pleased with an 8.
TTP Verbal Beta
I began TTP Verbal and began with the CR modules. It was the first time learning about the different question types and what they meant. Before this, I thought assumption and inference basically meant the same thing and I had no real clue how to attack boldface questions, etc.. So, this was pretty nice to actually learn in a systematic way the different Q-Types and the common traps. I haven’t taken another CR course so I can’t compare this to a Powerscore, let’s say, but I know this definitely took my CR skills to the next level. It made me think logically in terms of the test and shaped how I approach the question. I then started their SC modules and I learned quite a bit, but I was getting so bored because of how long the chapters were. There are tons of practice questions which works to my learning style, but I was still a little overwhelmed. SC is no joke and there are lots of caveats to know, but the course covers most of them. They did not have an RC module yet, but that was fine for me because I honestly didn’t even want to learn anything more for this demanding test—I figured that I just need to read the passage and ill be fine.
GMATPrep Mock 2: 690 (Q47 V38 IR8)
I was annoyed with this. I had done all this work on verbal only to get the exact same verbal score—I did not know why this happened. Also, my Q score went down slightly, but since I had gotten a 49 prior I knew that I had it in me to score higher. At this point of my studying I was studying two hours daily with no days off and spending most of it on verbal, so I decided that every other day I would do a random custom test on TTP to keep my quant skills sharp. I studied for another two weeks and took another mock.
GMATPrep Mock 3: 690 (Q45 V39 IR 4)
Now I was getting pissed, upset and insecure about everything. I had spent two and a half months between my first mock and this one and went down 20 points. Two months is all some people need to study for this whole test and I had spent years. I felt horrible the rest of the day. I know 690 was a very good score, but I was aiming for much higher—at least a 720. My quant actually went all the way down to 45 and my verbal only increased by a single point. I think I blindly skipped ahead on most of IR. I was looking up on google to see if it was normal to plateau on mocks, just to get some validation that I wasn’t just stupid. I even messaged the guys at TTP and Marty Murray, the creator of the verbal curriculum offered to chat on the phone. We had a fun chat and I asked about mindfulness techniques as I read a couple articles where he cited mindfulness and meditation for taking him to his perfect 800 score. I continued to work my tail off on quant as I was very frustrated with this score. I couldn’t believe after all the tireless nights and hard work I put in that i would have a Q45. I decided to alternate my days of studying: one day would be quant, the next verbal and so on. I was studying about 3 hours a day now because I had watched on a Manhattan Prep Youtube video that 3 hours maximum is ideal because anything past that would be counterproductive, but as I later realized this was a complete myth—I was able to study much longer, but that comes later in my journey. I would spend two hours in the morning working on problems and reviewing lessons and then watch an hour long video from GMATNinja, Manhattan Prep or Veritas Prep in the evening.
One thing I noted was that I was definitely fatigued during this mock. I would take the mock identically to how the Online GMAT was structured, which meant no break between Quant and Verbal and then 5 mins before IR. So, I knew I needed to do more mocks to get used to solving 67 questions in a row and maintain sharpness throughout. However, I had already used 3 of the official mocks and I was scared of doing more too soon and seeing the same old 690ish score, so I researched non-official mocks and saw that Manhattan Prep, Veritas Prep and Kaplan all had options. I did not want to pay anymore for study materials however, since I had already been paying for TTP for about a year at this point and I had bought the 4 GMATPrep tests that aren’t free. So, I decided that I would take each of these test prep companies’ free mocks.
Manhattan Prep Mock 1: 720 (Q45 V42 IR4)
I often heard online that one shouldn’t be too concerned with the scores of non-official mocks as the scoring algorithm can never be sufficiently replicated, but I’d be lying if I said seeing this score didn’t make me feel good. The quant was lower than I was aiming for, but I often read that MGMAT mocks have notoriously difficult quant sections—so I was pretty happy with the 45. I was also happy with the verbal, but the algorithm is definitely off with this mock because I got 12 verbal questions wrong and still had a 42. I’m sure this could never be the case with official tests, but I was still happy about it.
My quant work continued every other day and I continued to do custom tests on random subjects on TTP and reviewed them. I also continued watching videos on Youtube. I comprehend subjects best when I can learn from many different sources, so combining TTP with videos from test prep companies and also with videos from just random math channels helped to synthesize a concept for me. I feel like it created different neural pathways for me and multiple reference points to draw from. I also continued to error log after each mock and on TTP questions that I felt were medium level difficulty—after all, the key to this test is to master the easy and medium concepts.
My verbal work continued as well and I knew that to earn an elite score, I would need to master SC. I heard that SC was the most learnable and so I figured that if I invested the time into this subsection that my verbal score would shoot up. I returned to the Manhattan Prep SC Guide and was pleasantly surprised. I was retaining more information from it than I had before. This must’ve been a combination of learning SC from TTP and having another reference point to draw from. Also, I was doing more practice questions from watching videos and doing mocks so, I could relate what I was reading to a question I had encountered.
GMATPrep Mock 4: 680 (Q49 V32 IR7)
This rollercoaster had taken a nosedive once again. I was very happy with my Q49 and I knew that I could attribute this to my constant custom tests. Quant is really a skill that needs to be sharpened, like an NBA player that shoots 1000 shots before the game. It really helped me to reduce fatigue, which is critical on this test. After all, it doesn’t matter what you have in your brain if you’re too tired to pull it out. Doing timed sets of 20 questions (I didn’t do 31 questions that often) helped in a big way. My verbal score was very frustrating, on the other hand. I had put in almost four months of hard verbal work and I dropped lower than I had on my first test without any verbal study. There was clearly a disconnect here, so I reviewed my mock and learned from my mistakes. It was at this point I was determined to perfect SC. I wanted to get every single SC question right on the exam. I also wanted to do really well on CR and the combination of the two would have to result in me getting an outstanding verbal score.
I started a pre-mock ritual where I would listen to music and dial in. I would repeat to myself my strategy for quant which was to “read every single word” and “take note of every restriction”. I think this was the key to getting me a Q49 because I minimized my mistakes caused by missing a single word such as “only”, for example or considering negative numbers when the first sentence of the question told me it was positive.
In keeping with my strategy of bolstering my stamina, one week later I took a Kaplan mock.
Kaplan Mock 1: 730 (Q48 V43 IR7)
I was happy about this even though I know I couldn’t put too much weight on the result of a non-official mock. I felt like I was putting all my skills together at this point. The quant section of this mock was tricky and semi-similar to the official questions I had done, but the verbal questions were definitely off. I started doing my review of mocks and when I would look the questions up on gmatclub there would be many comments along the lines of “this question is dubious” and so I didn’t even review most of the verbal.
At this point, I started meditating every night before bed. I would look up a 10 minute guided meditation on Youtube and follow along.
Veritas Prep Mock 1: 710 (Q49 V39 IR4)
Now, I was especially happy about this one because I had heard that Veritas has particularly difficult mocks and so I figured that if I could get a 710, then my actual score could be much better. The quant was pretty difficult, but the verbal was just strange at points. The SC questions were not like any of the official materials I had practiced with and the CR was also off. I agree with anyone who says that the official verbal questions are the only ones you should practice with. I personally enjoyed the TTP CR questions myself and I feel like they definitely helped me, but they are extremely hard so don’t take the chapter tests scores to heart.
Now that I had scored over 700 on two non-official mocks, I felt my confidence surge back up a bit. At this point my strategy was clear: 1) I would study in 2 hour chunks, once in the morning and once in the afternoon for a total of 4 hours. I chose 2 hours chunks because that was about how long the quant and verbal sections combined would be. I wanted to be completely comfortable working straight through so that I would build up my stamina. I figured that if I could do this twice a day then doing it once on exam day would be effortless. 2) I would study quant and verbal both on the same day—the first chunk would be quant and the second would be verbal.
I then took the Manhattan SC Guide and decided to read it completely from cover to cover. This was my third or fourth run through but it was key to perfecting my SC. It took me 3 days of reading a few hours each day, but somehow it felt like I was truly understanding it this time. Before, my eyes might glaze over an unfamiliar concept and I would skip ahead and assume that I understood it, but now I was reading every single word in the book and fully comprehending it. I would also refer to TTP SC to cross reference if I truly understood a concept from all angles. I encourage anyone to return to study materials intermittently throughout your studies—because you will have more context from practice questions. Even though I had “read” it 3 times prior, it was like I was reading it with brand new eyes. After I finished this read through of the Manhattan book, I could not get questions wrong. I would do SC questions of 700 level difficulty in timed sets of 10-12 and would get 100% accuracy for days on end. The combination of TTP Verbal SC, MGMAT SC and trying to identify every mistake in all the four wrong answers of every practice question I did made me pretty bulletproof.
I would also do OG quant questions in timed sets in the mornings and review them. Thank god for gmatclub for this one. I don’t see any reason to buy the OG when all the questions are on their website. I’m not sure how they get around the copyright issues, but honestly I don’t care, this question bank was invaluable. I would click on the “Official Guide” tag and then open up 10-15 tabs of questions and work through them. At first, I was struggling with the OG questions because there definitely is a difference between the way the questions are asked in OG and the way TTP questions are. The OG will have a modifier or restriction that you really have to pay attention to, whereas the TTP questions were very straightforward. So, to anyone that is using TTP, I would recommend practicing with OG questions to get the feel of what the questions on your official test will be.
After 3 weeks of strict studying on August 10, I figured it was time for me to take GMATPrep Mock 5 because I planned to take the Online GMAT in August.
GMATPrep Mock 5: 770 (Q50 V45 IR8)
I got up from my chair at home and flexed. It was all coming together. This was the score I knew I was capable of when I could put all my skills and tools together. I was comfortable sitting and working for 2 hours straight so my fatigue was handled and I could actively think. I had reduced my dumb mistakes on quant by paying attention to every single word, qualifier and restriction. My verbal shot up because I had close to mastered SC and my CR was pretty strong. My RC was leading to a couple mistakes but at the time, I didn’t know that it was possible to improve RC—I would learn that was false. I had only done IR on mocks and so I was happy with my perfect score there.
After everything I had been through up to this point, seeing a 770 on my screen was the confidence booster I needed. As wrong as it may sound, I needed validation that what I was doing and all the time and effort and sacrifices I had made were leading somewhere. I continued reading every night for one hour, which I had started a couple weeks prior, and meditating for 10 minutes each night with Youtube videos. Before the mock, I took a nap and I listened to Eminem, to get my energy up because he raps in an extremely fast cadence which helped me to energize and lock in. I felt the meditation helped me to relax into each question. My “mantra” before the test was that when a question popped up in front of me, I would take in all the details of the question. I would notice what every single word was saying. I would notice all the modifiers, in both quant and verbal questions. Modifiers are huge in all sections of the test. I believed that focusing fully and taking in the question one at a time, in a meditative way, would undoubtedly lead me to getting the question correct and if I just kept doing this question after question, the score would take care of itself.
For the next week, I didn’t know exactly what to study because I felt like I had learned everything, so I took my foot off the pedal a bit because I didn’t know what direction to drive in. I continued to read and meditate at night and one week after Mock 5, I decided to confidently take Mock 6.
GMATPrep Mock 6: 680 (Q42 V40 IR7)
Dumbfounded. Shocked. Extremely Confused. How on earth did I get a Q42? I had never received a quant score that low before. A V40 I could live with because I knew that the margin for error on verbal is so tiny. It turns out I only had 5 verbal questions wrong. I couldn’t believe that a Q42 was my level of quant proficiency. After all the work I had put in, I couldn’t imagine this to be the case. I did notice however that my energy before the mock started was slightly low. I had tried to take a nap, but I couldn’t really fall asleep so I just rolled around. As I got up to listen to my music and move my body around, which embarrassingly included shadow boxing, I wasn’t moving around that much. I feel like I started the mock with a laissez faire attitude and I attribute this to my meditation. Naturally, I’m a pretty relaxed person, even though preparing for this test gave me extreme anxiety and meditating definitely helped, but I think I went too far into believing I had to be “zen” during the test. This calm demeanour made me quite feeble during quant, and I ran behind on time, and to catch up I rushed through some questions which upon review were extremely easy.
I planned to take the exam on August 25th, which gave me 8 days to lock in and get myself prepared for the big dance. Here’s what I did:
1. I stopped meditating—it had done what it was supposed to do, which was allow me to see more in the moment, but it was having diminishing returns by making me too blasé regarding my approach.
2. I studied for 5-6 hours each day.
3. I did timed sets of 20 to 30 quant questions in a row from questions off of gmatclub, where I would just open up a bunch of tabs. I would then review and error log any sub-600 and 600-700 level questions that I got wrong. I would look at the 700 level question answers, and if it was way over my head or the percentage of difficulty was 75% or higher, I didn’t bother to error log. I figured my time was best spent solidifying my weakness on easy/medium question as opposed to learning some obscure geometry concept.
4. I did 36 OG verbal questions in timed sets with equal parts of SC, CR and RC. Since verbal was the latter part of the test, I wanted to reduce or eliminate any fatigue associated with doing 36 verbal questions in a row. Like I mentioned before, you can know all the rules and question types that you want, but if you’re not fully awake in the moment then that knowledge won’t help you.
5. I would do shorter sets of 10-15 of each question type as well and read the answers that people posted.
There were a few things that I took away from my 8 days of ripping through OG questions. The first was the difference in my energy that I needed for quant and for verbal. For quant, instead of the lax “zen” mindset I had in my last mock, I benefitted from having an aggressive approach. I would sit up straight, take in all the details, do my work carefully and with a determined mindset, check that I was answering the right question, click the right answer, confirm and move on. My energy was much better now and having a slightly “aggressive” and determined energy was the key to nailing these timed sets for me.
These timed sets took my verbal to a high level. Due to my thorough SC work, which always included naming off every reason why wrong answers were wrong, I could barely get an SC question wrong. CR was about 80% accuracy, which I was slightly nervous about at first, but the more practice questions you do the more you see what the GMAT is looking for. The RC practice problems exposed a weakness in me that I refused to see because I couldn’t imagine that I was bad at all sections of this test, but it revealed that I missed a lot of the little things in the questions and answer choices. Modifiers and prepositions in RC are very important to pay attention to, especially in the answer choices.
The day before the exam I made a list of everything I needed to get done for the next day and cleared my desk. I did practice questions and reviewed my error log. My exam was scheduled for 6:15 PM the next day, with check in at 5:45 PM. I find that my mind fully awakens in the evening, after I’ve gotten a couple meals in me and a nap. This was also around the same time that I had taken all my mocks. The night before the exam I watched motivational videos. You know the ones that come up in our Youtube recommended pages and have the word “DETERMINATION” on the thumbnail over a picture of a person sweating. I watched one by Eric Thomas called “You Owe You” and this really struck a chord with me. I did owe me. I owed myself a good performance and I owed myself to put my best foot forward on this test. I owed myself, after all the long, hard nights I had put in, to push through this test with big energy and focused determination.
Exam Day
On August 25th, I woke up in the morning and had oatmeal, because I found it to give me a steady energy level. I did about 20 practice questions of quant and verbal—mostly just sub-600 and 600-700 and a couple 700-level questions to get my confidence up. There was no point in doing super hard questions and demoralizing myself. Exam day is all about mindset. I did really well on this practice set and decided to get my body moving and the blood flowing. I rolled out on a foam roller and stretched out. Throughout this entire time I have been working out 3-4 times a week and apparently this is really beneficial for energy levels. For 45 mins, I stretched out and moved around. During this stretching session, I watched videos on the mentality of Kobe Bryant and his killer instinct to win. I watched football hype up videos to get my energy right. I woke ever cell of my body up and got prepared for the battle to come.
I showered, ate lunch—a sandwich, and crackers, nothing too heavy, watched Netflix and by 3:00 PM I was back in bed for a nap. I didn’t fully fall asleep, but I closed my eyes for a while until 4:30. Then at 4:30, my pregame ritual began. I had researched on how all the top athletes have a pregame ritual and created my own. I put on Eminem and Drake in my earphones and was up and moving. I danced, got in my body and got hyped. I shadowboxed and breathed deeply. I watched football pump up videos of Ray Lewis and got aggressive. I was gameday ready and ready to show this test whose house they were in. I had homecourt advantage being that I was taking the GMAT Online and I was never letting anything come in to my house and push me around—I was ready to smack this test. I then put on a nice new shirt and nice shorts. I also made sure that my hair looked nice and even trimmed up my beard. I didn’t do this for the proctor that would be watching me through my webcam, I did this for myself. They say, when you look good you feel good and when you feel good you do good. My mind was primed. Some people say that quant and verbal test the same things, but I had a different mentality going into each section. For quant, I was going to be aggressive. Every question that came up, I was mentally slapping and moving onto the next. For verbal, my approach was more relaxed but still determined. After all the most important part of approaching any verbal question is truly understanding exactly what the passage/stem/question/answer is saying and you have to settle into each question for this. At 5:10, I had 16 questions prepared all around sub-600 to 600-700 level from PS,DS,SC and CR. Marty Murray had posted on reddit that doing warm up questions were beneficial, so I set them up from gmatclub that morning. I wasn’t meant to learn anything from them (I didn’t even check if I got the answer right so as to not shake my confidence) and I wasn’t meant to be challenged by them—these warm up questions were to warm up my hands and my brain. I finished them and went to the bathroom. I ate a few dark chocolate covered almonds and sat down for check in.
At 5:45, check-in was open and I began the process. I had already done the system check a couple days prior, which just checks the internet connection and the system requirements of the computer you are using. They then gave me a url to enter on my phone which sent me to a Pearson website. On this site I took 7 pictures: 4 of all four sides of my workspace, 2 of both sides of my ID and 1 selfie. I then put my phone out of arms reach and continued with the check in on my laptop. My proctor immediately asked me to show my whiteboard to the webcam because she wanted to see something. I’m assuming it was to see the brand logo of the whiteboard that was stuck on the front and to ensure that it wasn’t a tiny equation or something. It was all okay and I slid the chat away. And the test began 15 mins early.
I took the 2 mins of instruction time to breathe deeply and slap myself in the face a few times; I’m sure this confused the proctor. I then began the quant section and was pleasantly surprised that it was a question I definitely knew how to do. The next question was extremely easy. Then I got some tricky questions, that I felt I knew how to do (but when I replayed it in my mind after the test I figured I got it wrong), and then something started to happen. I was gaining on time. I had never done this in any of my mocks. At around question 12 the questions felt extremely easy. This pattern continued on for over 10 more questions and by question 24 I felt dejected. In my mind, the only reason that the questions I was getting were so easy was because I had bombed the beginning of the test. After all, that’s how everyone online explains the algorithm to work, so it must be true right? I slowed down and answered questions but it was only taking me a minute to do each of them. I shook my head and remembered: “aggression”. So, I snapped back in, stopped feeling sorry for myself, and had 15 minutes for the last 3 questions. One of these was time consuming for me so I’m glad I had the time, but I’m not even sure if I got it right. When quant finished, I felt horrible. The section seemed way too easy—in fact it seemed like I had been given a mock from 1995 because the questions to me seemed like the “classics” and none of those “next-gen” questions I had practiced with had appeared. I couldn’t dwell on it too long. I took a minute to breathe and let it go. I had verbal in front of me and I was actually excited for it because I had gotten really good at it in the past month. Right off the bat in verbal I got hit with a pretty hard RC, but I’m not sure if it was very hard or just made harder since I just finished an entire quant section. The questions were tricky, but the test moved on. The rest of the RC were well spread out and easier than the first. For the most part the CR was very very manageable, which I enjoyed obviously, but I’m a bad gauge at question difficulty—questions that I saw as pretty easy were touted as high difficulty on gmatclub and even vice versa. Most of the SC was “hackable”, but there were a couple that I spent some good time on. Overall, I finished verbal with a much different feeling than I finished quant with. After verbal the IR instructions come up before the option to take a break does, which is really strange, so a heads up on that. After I clicked through the page instructions, I wiped down my whiteboard and showed it to the webcam, front and back. I then went to the bathroom and ate a couple more dark chocolate covered almonds. I also just stretched and breathed. I sat down with around 30 seconds left on my break and I assumed it would automatically take me to the next screen, but it doesn’t. You have to click next to get to your first IR question. Overall IR was straightforward and had some interesting question types. Like I said, I never studied IR and only did it during mocks, but I felt it went okay. There were definitely a couple I just guessed on because I didn’t want to bother doing the calculation—but it should be noted that never once have I ever used the calculator given to me on any IR section. The test ended and I showed my whiteboard to the webcam. Clicked through to the end and the window closed. I was done.
The rest of the night was spent going over the quant section in my head. I had a horrible feeling in my stomach that I had messed up gravely at the beginning and that was why I was given questions that I perceived as extremely easy. To be fair, I was never a good gauge on quant question difficulty, but I was still perturbed. I was pretty comfortable with my verbal performance and knew that all that SC and CR drilling had paid off. Even the RC work I had done made me a lot more confident in that subsection. I knew there was a possibility that I had bombed quant and that my overall score may be decent but I know that most schools look for a decent quantitative score. Especially coming from a philosophy background, I couldn’t rely on a strong verbal alone. But, I was merciful to myself and allowed myself to take a full day off of studying for the first time in several months. It felt weird, but oh so good to do absolutely no studying and not have the feeling that I need to be getting back to my desk soon.
August 27 arrived and I planned to study lightly that day, in the case that I would need to retake. If I’m being honest with myself now, it made me really uncomfortable to think that I would have to continue on, but I would make myself do it anyway. I kept checking them website to see if my score was revealed or not. I saw that there was going to be maintenance on the site at 5:30 PM that day, so I hoped that it would be posted before that. I kept checking, then when 5:30 crept up I decided to check my phone one last time and I got and email: my score had been posted. I felt like this would be torture if my score was posted but that I wouldn’t be able to see it due to website maintenance. Nonetheless, I logged in, the website worked and I clicked the new button that appeared that said “View Online GMAT Score”:
760 (Q48 V47 IR8): 99 Percentile
My heart welled up. I did it. I really did it. After all these years, all those times I had given up and came back. All those long nights after work when I was dead tired but forced myself to study anyway. Those lunch breaks spent watching SC videos and doing flashcards when all I wanted to do was relax. The slaps in the face I got from mocks and quizzes that showed that I was not up to par. The fear that I would never overcome this. The massive insecurity I felt by feeling like everyone studied in 3 months and here I was 3 and a half years later. The shame I would feel when people would ask if I had finished the test yet and I would tell them no. It all doesn’t matter anymore. I exceeded what I set out to do.
The GMAT had taken up such a huge part of my life for so long. Even when I wasn’t studying for it, it would be there constantly when I woke up and went to bed. This has been an absolutely formative time in my young adult life. I’ve never put in the time and dedication into anything more than I have into this test—and I did what I set out to do. I proved to myself that I’m relentless and unstoppable and when I dedicate myself to a task I will get it done. I can’t believe it’s over, but I’m really glad it is. I can now put my time and energy into other parts of my life and grow as a person even more.
I’d like to thank my family and friends for putting up with this and I’d also like to thank all the following people and companies: The Organic Chemistry Tutor, GMATNinja Charles Bibilos, ScottTargetTestPrep, MartyTargetTestPrep, dcummins, bb, souvik101990, Kaplan, Manhattan Prep, Veritas Prep, Magoosh, GMAT CLUB, R/GMAT and R/MBA.
All the best for the school of your choice !!! 
29 Aug 2020, 22:03
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Wow!!! Fantastic score!
Thank you so much for posting!
This is one amazing debrief. It is probably the winner for the longest one!!! I will have to read it in full tomorrow (it took a while even to scroll to post it)
Posted from my mobile device
Thank you so much for posting!
This is one amazing debrief. It is probably the winner for the longest one!!! I will have to read it in full tomorrow (it took a while even to scroll to post it)
Posted from my mobile device
